The Research on Grammar Instruction: A Brief Summary
Formaltesting of the assumption began in the 1950s. In the early 1960s, the Na-
tional Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) asked Braddock, Lloyd-Jones,
and Schoer to examine the existing research and assess the status of the field.
Published in 1963, their report offered what has become the most widely
known statement on grammar and writing:
In view of the widespread agreement of research studies based upon
many types of students and teachers, the conclusion can be stated in
strong and unqualified terms that teaching formal [traditional] grammar
has a negligible or, because it usually displaces some instruction and
practice in actual composition, even a harmful effect on the improvement
of writing. (pp. 37–38)This assessment was strong, but it did not stop various researchers from fur-
ther investigating grammar instruction and writing performance. Whitehead
(1966), for example, compared a group of high school students who received
no grammar instruction in writing classes with one who received instruction in
traditional grammar, with an emphasis on sentence diagramming. The results
showed no significant difference in writing performance between the two
groups. White (1965) studied three classes of seventh graders. Two of the
classes studied grammar, whereas the third used this time reading popular nov-
els. At the end of the study, White found no significant difference in terms of
writing performance. The students who had been reading novels wrote just as
well as those who had studied grammar.
Gale (1968) studied fifth graders, dividing them into four groups. One group
received no grammar instruction, whereas the other three studied one of three
different types of grammar. Students in two of the grammar groups, but not the
students who studied traditional grammar, ended up being able to write slightly
more complex sentences than students in the other two groups, but there were
no measurable differences in overall writing ability.
In another investigation, Bateman and Zidonis (1966) conducted a 2-year
study that started when the students were in ninth grade. Some of the students
received instruction in grammar during this period, the rest received no gram-
mar instruction. Again, there was no significant difference in overall writing
performance.
Elley, Barham, Lamb, and Wyllie (1976) began with a relatively large pool
of subjects (248), which they studied for 3 years. Some critics of the earlier
studies had suggested that the lack of any measurable differences might be
TEACHING GRAMMAR 27